Begone, Enigmas, Faceless Voids, and Tidehunters of the world — triple ultimates are no longer possible.
Dota 2’s latest patch 7.32c introduced a big change to the Refresher family. Refresher Orb and Shard now share cooldowns with each other — using one will also put the other on cooldown. Plus, the cooldowns will no longer go down while they are used in the backpacks.
While these two changes will obviously affect spellcasters with long cooldown abilities, preventing them from chaining powerful abilities like Black Hole, Chronosphere, or Ravage, it’s also yet another nerf to an item that’s become increasingly popular for core players.
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Why this 7.32c Refresher Orb change is also a Black King Bar nerf
It seems like everything in Dota eventually ties itself back to Black King Bar.
Refresher Orb has become an increasingly popular pickup over the past year for heroes that rely on Black King Bar to stay in the fight. While these cover big spellcasters, they also include cores.
It wasn’t uncommon for players to opt for a Refresher Orb instead of another defensive item — because BKB is so game-changing of an item that a second one is far better than any other option. The item serves double duty as an offensive when these cores could also leverage a second round of their spells.
Refresher Razor was the in-vogue build for several patches, before increasing mana costs on the Orb and BKB made the build much more difficult to pull off. Heroes like Mars, Bloodseeker, Doom, and Shadow Fiend that have long cooldown teamfight abilities also like the item.
But Refresher Orb also became the standard seventh item for many carries, over something like a Moon Shard of Aghanim’s Blessing. Another BKB is almost always the reason why.
By nerfing the item to no longer tick down in the backpack, that means players are forced to keep the item in their own inventories, or even in a nearby courier to actually gain access to it in a fight.
Players can still disengage, wait the six seconds for the Refresher Orb to cooldown, then jump back in — provided the Refresher is off cooldown. However, the item will still need to be placed in your inventory instead of a sixth item, which could gimp some loadouts.
Still, the item will likely see play as a seventh item, but pros and players may find other options more enticing, instead of it being “another BKB.”
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